Kevin Huffman is one of those Teach for America alums who is changing the face of public education in America.
He is an advocate for privately managed charter and for vouchers, which will hasten the privation of public education.
And he wants to change the teaching profession, of course, so he proposes to cut teachers’ pay across the board, so he can reserve some money to attract the best and brightest.
The starting teachers’ salary in Tennessee is about $30,000. If a teacher or a principal has a doctorate, they might earn as much as $50,000.
No one teaches in Tennessee to get rich. Under Huffman’s proposal, new teachers will earn even less than teachers do now. There will be less money for advanced degrees and experience. There will be no super-salaries for superstars.
None of this makes any sense, other than to wipe out any increments for those who go to the expense of earning a masters or a doctorate.
The Tennessee State Board of Education, under the control of the far-right Governor Bill Haslam, is set to approve the new salary proposal today.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Someone nneds to revise _A Nation at Risk_ to include the ramifications of the intentional stupefication of the teaching profession on our global jockeying.
LikeLike
I’m visiting in Tennessee right now – teaching at a music camp – and I spoke last night with some teacher friends who are angry at being insulted because if their experience and expertise. There is no way Mr. Rhee, uh, I mean Huffman’s TFA thugs can bring what these folks do in AP physics and industrial technology.
Stealing money from families to give to corporate interests
Sent from my iPhone
LikeLike
I would like to see every government thug ( I mean official) get payed based upon their value to humanity! What would their salary look like? Let’s create a salary scale for them. Or for every occupation. What is anyone worth?
LikeLike
I know teachers across the country are tired & demoralized but we need to mobilize & protest loudly against the destruction of this profession. I can’t get over the fact that so many teachers are women, too. This is a war on women in my book & it’s supported by the Obama administration. Shameful.
LikeLike
Teaching has generally been mostly women, but it appears that more men are leaving. Anyone know the stats on this? Last 30 or so years?
Although, the gender equality movement has been going on since the 1960s, too little progress has been made. We are now talking about LEANING-IN & $0.77: $1.00. Slow as molasses! At this rate, we’ll all be dead.
LikeLike
“At this rate, we’ll all be dead.” Doesn’t matter the rate. We all end up dead. What matters is the here and now (especially not some pie in the sky “afterdeath”). And here and now the gender gap in pay for comparable positions is abhorrent.
And if you listen closely to the tea partiers, they want to regress to a time when women couldn’t vote, and were supposed to be completely subservient to men. Those facts are definitely a part of the conversation about gender inequality.
Okay TE & HU time to chime in!
LikeLike
It’s your own fearful fantasies of being once more a child under the thumb of priests and nuns, puritanical throwbacks that you are seeing in the tea partiers. Remember that the tea party was the creation of a woman. The women in the movement are freedom fighters, patriots, constitutionalists. You can’t justify your anti-tea party prejudices by making them out to be theocratic Muslims. I can understand your still being hostile to an oppressive experience with religion as a youth—even James Joyce had that, and a doozie of a one—but it is a mischaracterization of the tea party movement as wanting that kind of cultural regression, repression, moral censoriousness. We just want to limit the size of government so it can’t mess with our lives. The bureaucratic state is the real oppressive, religion-like tyranny, it’s the religion of the state, worship of the state. At least that’s how I see it.
LikeLike
“t’s your own fearful fantasies of being once more a child under the thumb of priests and nuns, puritanical throwbacks that you are seeing in the tea partiers.”
HU, didn’t realize that you were so enthralled with Freud!
LikeLike
I know, I shouldn’t stir the crazy, but I’ll bite, HU. Do you think that ANYTHING should be done by government? If so, what? Do you think ALL things are better done by the private sector? How do you account for the financial crisis in 2008, done by private companies with enormous greed?
Finally, do you feel that most public employees are the same as those greedy bankers?
LikeLike
Of course. The things that the federal government does best are those thing stipulated by the constitution. Now, I know the Supreme Court has put its thumb on the scale in a number of areas where it should not have, and permitted actions deleterious to the general welfare, and that the current administration loves to go around constitutional prohibitions. But even so, my answer is that government should do no more than is necessary for the functioning of the country under the constitution. Among things the federal must do are see to the national defense and to sound money and to the federal courts and be an honest referee over interstate business. It should not be involved in education in any way. As to state government, again the state constitutions are controlling. The criminal court system is one essential function. Defining marriage, abortion, roads, hunting seasons are others. Education is a state responsibility by state constitution. The state constitutions all mandate some form of “public” education. In the past this has meant traditional school systems. It is not clear to me that that mandate might not be satisfied by charters and/or vouchers. When government has not been prudent with its expenditures and has left future liabilities unfunded, those obligations must be paid for from current income, which has dropped during the recession, and thus puts a squeeze on school districts. It is that lack of fiscal foresight we are experiencing. Government has some essential functions, but when cuts in revenue happen, functions that can legally be off loaded will be. Thus charters, with expenses limited to the foundation grant and pensions converted to defined contribution rather than defined benefit, don’t pile up additional new debt. In essence, a school district can do no more than it can get its inhabitants to pay for.
LikeLike
As an “education professional,” will Huffman be reducing his own salary as well? It’s for the children, after all.
The plan here is obviously to reduce teaching to the level of WalMart greeter.
LikeLike
Please disabuse yourself of the notion that Huffman is an “educational professional”. Highly paid political hack might be a better moniker.
LikeLike
My quotation marks were meant to indicate sarcasm and derision. C’mon, Duane, you know me better than to consider that clown one of us!
LikeLike
Ah, didn’t see the quotation marks originally. Sometimes my sarcasmometer doesn’t work as well as it should. Who says that a close reading of the text isn’t warranted???
LikeLike
Yeah, Alan–just like Jean-Claude Brizard was SO concerned about CPS students and the money crunch there–he left WAAAY before his contract was up and–you guessed it!–was paid his ENTIRE $250K salary.
(I know that was your sarcasm, Alan, I just wanted to make sure that no abuse of public school funds goes unnoticed. How about it, readers? Send in your district’s, city’s, state’s similar tales! Just as Diane lists the Education Heroes, we can also have a Hall of Shame!)
LikeLike
Great set of books those “Baseball Hall of Shame” ones. Zullo & Nash.
LikeLike
courtesy of ELI BROAD and the BROAD academy for public school destruction and teacher demoralization.
LikeLike
Less than $30,000?
Teachers will be part of the Poor for sure! Their own children will qualify for free-reduced-lunch program.
The shaming and demoralizing of teachers may be taking too long to kill the last public school teacher. We are not dying nor going away quick enough. The hatered toward teachers in this country is much deeper than philosophical and economic differences. This is deep, deep very deep hatred! Too bad we don’t dig up Freud anymore to explain such dysfunctional behaviors.
Decency MUST prevail! The other options are unthinkable.
We shall continue to shout! LOUD….
LikeLike
I have qualified for free and reduced lunch before. My case one TEA used to request teacher raises. I have been a single mom, so my salary is it. And it’s not like I have 18 children, I have 3. And for 4 years, we qualified for free and reduced lunch.
LikeLike
I’m almost surprised (almost) that new teachers’ salaries are being targeted, since usually people complain about the salaries teachers can eventually make with longevity. One consequence of lowering the starting salary (similar to using TFA recruits) is that it prices people out of the profession. The people most able to afford to be teachers are now people with no dependents whose families can help them out with money (or who are willing to live monastically in teacher-dorms). Or another potential outcome is that traditional teaching certification becomes a luxury that most people entering the profession can’t afford to pursue because they won’t be able to pay back their loans.
LikeLike
In Tennessee, the teachers’ salaries are low at the bottom and the top.
LikeLike
Given that Huffman’s gig and the State Board of “Yes” Men and Women are unelected positions, he has free reign to make these sort of moronic and deleterious decisions.
LikeLike
I propose a national Day without a Teacher.
LikeLike
Maybe the state of Tennessee can take a page from Wal-Mart and give prospective new teachers applications for food stamps. Oh, wait, we’re cutting that too. Well, I hear dandelions make a decent stew if you cook them right….
If someone wrote a fiction book with these kinds of things as the plot line, no editor would publish it – too unrealistic.
LikeLike
these TFAers are all over Indianapolis and our ed reform movement. They set up the Mind Trust to funnel money into their efforts and to bring all of the affiliated groups into town to lead us into improvement. funny though, promised evalustions of TFA did not materialize, charter schools perform no better than the local public and are starting to decline in performance, based on those stanford models they paid to develop, and now the focus is on how happy parents are with choice and vouchers now that the promised soaring scores and grad rates have not come about.
LikeLike
And don’t forget if the charter schools fail as most of them are in Indiana, they have their start-up loans forgiven by the state legislature. Did I say forgiven? I meant paid off from the Education budget. These charters are owned by some very wealthy individuals such as Dennis Bakke of the Imagine Charters. TFA and failed Charters,the lovely remains of Tony Bennett.
LikeLike
And, Dienne, LOTS of delicious road kill in Tennessee!
Also–good huntin’ and fishin’!
LikeLike
This is actually courtesy of the citizens of Kentucky. They are the ones who voted for the crazies and keep them in office. As always it is the fault of the public for allowing this insanity going on now. we won civil rights and rapidly gave them up. Do you really think 9-11 was an accident or a plan to implement what is going on?
LikeLike
George, are you with the NSA?! I was JUST now having this very discussion with an acquaintance who thinks the Bush administration was behind 9-11!
LikeLike
I’m sure Huffman would be much more effective on the job if his salary was $25k.
LikeLike
Oh my! What a brilliant idea! Not.
LikeLike
Giving unqualified people power to make decisions makes it easy for the people behind them to get what they want, but save their ass…… when this all goes down the tubes.
LikeLike
Kevin needs to provide a blood or urine specimen for testing. It’s obvious that something is wrong with his thinking and though process. We need to find out. Just looking out for ya. You hear?
LikeLike
I might also suggest an MRI of his brain. Oh, I better not give anyone ideas. Garp, I mean Gates, might create a law that all children need one to enter preschool. Give them more data for sorting early.
LikeLike
So Huffman thinks that education is bad for education. He needs to brush up on his critical thinking skills.
LikeLike
Education is the lifeblood of this nation, without it we can’t continue to be the great nation that we are. I believe that with so much other salient issues to address such as health concerns, poverty, racism, social security, crime (including white collar crime), war, the list is endless; why such hideous attacks on education? We need teachers. They are professionals who take time to instruct our future leaders of America, our children. The majority of America has to work to take care of themselves and must have public school systems in place where their children can learn important academia and life skills that will follow them the rest of their lives. Not everyone can afford private education or desire charter schools, but you can rest assure they need and want teachers to help them educate their children.
So many look down on the teaching profession but these degreed men and women have a tough job and tough audience that they must perform for on a daily basis. Why not pay them well, like we do engineers, doctors, sports figures, entertainers, news anchors, journalists, etc.? These aforementioned careers all stemmed from learning, in a classroom setting of some sort, with an instructor. How do you justify paying them less or not giving them increases? How do you justify not giving ALL schools proper resources so that ALL students can learn? Is it that we believe that only a FEW are entitled to the spoils of America and beyond its borders? We all deserve a good education which, in turn, creates opportunities in life. Educated Americans are happier Americans who can increase the beauty of this nation with their knowledge and skills. Education gives power to those who are exposed to it and, with that type of power we can surely break the cycle of poverty in our country, eliminate the ignorance that keeps racism alive, maintain social security to an aging population, reduce crimes of all kinds, eradicate war and seek peace(an intelligent way of life, in my view). Education, teachers, and social justice in the classrooms are a necessity and should be viewed as precious and treated as such. Privatization of education( another mistake), teachers layoffs, teacher pay cuts or their shameful salaries, lack of resources and funds to ALL schools; they are not good for anyone and serve as a blemish on this wonderful country.
LikeLike
Let’s cut Kevin Huffman’s pay. How do you like those apples?
LikeLike
I’m saddened and disgusted. What should be a respected profession is being dwindled to a Walmart business. Those coming out of Teach ( to ruin) America have been shown to lack professionalism and ability. I fear for the future
LikeLike
I am a teacher in TN. I have 6 years of experience and a masters degree, and I don’t make even 40k a year. Our district already has a performance incentive program – the top level of merit pay, which I did earn last year, was $2,000 – about $1600 after taxes. Insulting. In fact, many teachers earned it. So what are they doing for this year? Raising the qualifications to make it harder for teachers to earn it because they didn’t want to give out so much $$.
Yesterday I received an email from Huffman – I think it was sent to all educators in TN through a listserve. I was so, very, very very very very tempted to reply to it and say just what someone said above – “Dear Mr. Huffman, I think it’s only fair that you too tie your salary to a measurement of our evaluation of your performance in office, and not receive any further raises unless warranted.”
But I didn’t, because I value my job. Unlike him.
LikeLike
Lets make sure we kick Haslam out of office in 2014 and make sure he takes Huffman with him. The next Governor better promise and deliver two things. 1. REPEAL COMMON CORE and GET RID OF HUFFMAN. There also needs to be a conflict of interest bill in TN that prevents elected officials from serving on committees in which they take campaign contributions from special interest associated with that committe. IE: Dolores Gresham the Chair of the Senate Education committee would not longer be eligible to serve on that committee if she continues to take contributions from Students First….Mr. Huffman’s ex Wife’s organization. There are way too many members of the education committees getting BIG bucks from education groups. This needs to stop!!
LikeLike
Canadian teachers have starting salaries of almost $50,000 depending on where you live. After 10 years, you can make $80,000. This is a professional salary based on experience and education. It is a liveable wage. American politicians say that you can’t compare your PISA results to Finland because the societal differences are too broad. How about comparing your results to Canada? We do quite well on standardized tests, in spite of (or perhaps BECAUSE OF ?) our respect for teachers as professionals. We aren’t perfect but at least we aren’t on a downward spiral where teachers receive less respect than garbage collectors. I wish American teachers the strength and fortitude to get through this period of craziness and disrespect. Stay strong.
LikeLike